


In Which Nott Has a Bad Night

by LindenE



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-09
Updated: 2019-01-09
Packaged: 2019-10-07 09:45:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17363684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LindenE/pseuds/LindenE
Summary: Just another routine fight...





	In Which Nott Has a Bad Night

Nott never even saw the crossbow bolt that got her coming.

It was a routine fight (As a sidenote, how weird had life gotten that deadly fights were “routine”? It was something she tried not to think about...often.). A nightime bandit attack on the way from here to there. Nothing serious; just another bump in the road. But this time, the party had gotten spread out unusually far from each other. She and Caleb were forced off on one side of the road, and the rest of them were somewhere over yonder, and things had started going south really fast. She remembered falling back, and making sure Caleb was even further back than she was, all while firing back as fast as she could reload, and thinking there were just a hell of a lot of bandits, and then a hard shove back, and she was lying on her back staring up at a cloudy night sky that didn’t even let a hint of moon shine through with cold seeping up through the parts of her that didn’t feel like they were incandescent, and then not much.

Eventually, there was gray-edged blackness and a whole lot of pain in her middle. Her eyes seemed to be open, which was unpleasant, but closing them, she discovered with experimentation, made it even worse. Faced with two bad choices, she opened them again, blinking to force some moisture back into them, and tried to focus. Still dark– okay, still night, then. And slightly off to one side, hovering, Caleb’s face. Not happy. Not looking at her, thank goodness because she was pretty convinced she didn’t look reassuring at the moment, but scanning the surroundings anxiously, with his night-blind human eyes. There seemed to be small branches right above them, which she didn’t remember. No bandits. No sounds of fighting. No sounds of anything, much, but a little bit of wind rustling the branches. She discovered she was really, really thirsty, and even though bothering Caleb when he didn’t want to be bothered was usually an exercise in futility, maybe this time it was worth it.

“Caleb?” she tried whispering around the pain that seemed to be trying to get in between her and everything else. Gratifyingly, his head whipped around to her immediately.

“Nott! Götter sei gedankt!” Which, while mostly incomprehensible, was at least obviously happy. Which was always good. “Are you-- How are you feeling?”

Stupid question. “Terrible!” she got out, between teeth gritted to try to skim over the pain waves coming from her middle. Unexpectedly, that seemed to be about as much energy as she had to muster, right at the moment, and the rest of the questions jostling for her attention would just have to wait a while. Strangely, her eyes seemed to have drifted closed again.

A time later (minutes? hours? more? no way to tell), Caleb’s voice broke through the gray waves of tidal pain again. “Nott? Can you hear me?” 

Um, yes. Yes, she could. Letting him know that, though, was a problem that had the merciful side-effect of distraction, and that was enough to let her climb out of the overwhelming grayness far enough to open her eyes again. He saw it; his face wasn’t far from hers, and he seemed to recognize that she was there, behind the drifting wall.

“We have a decision to make. I need you to tell me what you want. You are hurt, badly.” Oh, yes, that was true, no arguing that much. “Neither of us has any healing potions, and you need healing.” No potions? Scrambling back through memories that seemed to float away as fast as she found them, yeah, she really couldn’t argue with that statement, either, all the while trying to make a mental note that she shouldn’t allow that to happen again, ever; it was too dangerous for squishy Caleb. 

“The others– they’re apparently out of range of my messaging from here. But they’ve got the healing you need, if–.” His voice, low and soft, quavered at the end of that statement, but he was trying to be strong and sure, and strong and sure were two good things that she wanted him to keep trying. “But they don’t know where we are. I’ve hidden us pretty well.” He seemed to be waiting for her, so she tried nodding, but discovered that her neck was apparently connected to her middle, somehow, because that set the pain off to new, impossible levels. It was a while before she really heard him again.

“The choice is, I can stay here with you. That’s what I want to do. Or I can go look for the others. They’re probably looking for us. They might find us on their own. Or they might not, at least not for a while. And you need help, now, but that means leaving you alone. Dragging you this far made the bleeding far worse– moving you further is... not possible.” There was a long pause, until her eyes opened again and she found his face in the darkness. He was waiting.

Well, there it was. She was pretty sure she was dying– you couldn’t feel this bad and not die, she was reasonably sure. But the question was, would it be better for Caleb to stay and watch it happen, or be somewhere else trying to stop it? The decision was easy, finding the way of least exertion to communicate it was hard.

“Go,” she got out finally, and was surprised to hear that it wasn’t a whisper, but a real, fully realized word. 

He nodded. She thought she felt something squeeze her hand, and then his face was gone. Almost thankfully, she let herself sink back into the surrounding pain and focus on nothing other than drawing breaths in and out until she wasn’t aware of anything.

Of course, she didn’t die. She never did anything that dramatic. She woke up to voices and a lovely spreading warmth from Jester’s hand on hers that drew out the pain like pulling a thorn out of the bottom of your foot. There were faces surrounding her, counting, all but one–

“Caleb?” she asked.

“He’s here– oops, no, wait, he’s there,” said Beau, looking around over her shoulder. And searching, Nott found him, separated from the others and facing away, shoulders hunched. Probably blaming himself for her ever being hurt in the first place.

With a sigh, Nott sat up, only wincing a little bit from the memory of the bolt in her belly. Someday, he was going to understand that not every bad thing was his fault. Until then, she had more work to do.


End file.
